Veronica Mars: The Comic Book?

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Veronica's producer talks about his ideas for movies and comics starring the character and his new gig on Miss/Guided.

By Eric Goldman

Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas has confirmed this week that the series will definitely not be returning in any form on television, but continues to explore the opportunity of the character living on in another medium.

The Toronto Star quotes Thomas as reiterating his desire to write a movie screenplay about Veronica, as he stated, "I have some ambition to write a screenplay, see if I can shop that and get it made." Thomas also revealed another new possible destination for the private eye character: comic books. Said Thomas, "I had a meeting with DC Comics last Monday and they want to do [Season 4] as a comic series." DC would be a natural place for Veronica Mars to end up, as the show is owned by Warner Bros, and is thus corporately tied to the AOL Time Warner owned DC.

In an interview on blogcritics.com, Thomas also explained a bit more about what happened to his idea to develop a new version of Veronica Mars, centered around the character as an adult FBI agent. "We started to feel pretty certain that we would not be back in our current form," Thomas said, discussing the past season of Veronica. "Dawn [Ostroff, president of The CW] had talked to me about doing a first year cop show, aside from Veronica Mars, so I came back and said, how about we put Veronica into a first year cop show. By 'first year cop' I mean surrounded by other rookie cops. It was our Hail Mary pass to try to get another season or two out of the show. When we went in and pitched it to them, Dawn loved it. The Hollywood Reporter even reported 'Veronica Mars back on the air, nearing a season four.'"

Rob Thomas with Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell in 2006

As for why that new incarnation of the show didn't happen, Thomas said, "The impression I got was someone, probably Les Moonves [president of CBS, who co-own The CW with Warner Bros]), just said 'are you kidding, we've given this show three seasons,' and killed it. We went from dead to back on the air to dead again very quickly. Our Hail Mary pass came very close to working but didn't quite get past all the filters it needed to."

Last month, when The CW announced their Veronica-free fall lineup, Ostroff was still a bit vague on there being a possible future show with Thomas and Veronica star Kristen Bell involved, and fans had heard the network had until June 15th to exercise any option to continue with Thomas and Bell.

Thomas remarked, "I don't want to say it's disingenuous because I think Dawn would love to do something with Kristin and myself on that network, but at the same time, it will make me look like the bad guy. Because they're not offering us much of a deal to do something new, but suddenly they can say to the press that they offered Rob the chance to continue on and he turned it down. Which isn't exactly the truth. The truth is they wanted me to write an FBI pilot with no guarantee behind it of episodes. Meanwhile I'm being offered real money to run a show that is on the air backed up by a development deal, a deal that Warner Brothers is not offering."

The show Thomas is referring to is Miss/Guided, the ABC midseason comedy starring Judy Greer (Arrested Development). Thomas has confirmed that barring any last minute contract complications, he will be an Executive Producer and the showrunner on the series. Said Thomas, "I've been doing Miss/Guided stuff every day this week, so I hope I have a job or I've been doing a lot of free work right now. But I think it's going to happen."